FESTIVAL: How Saint Lucia celebrates Jazz with Mother’s Day, features local artistes

Castries, Saint Lucia: Jazz of Saint Lucia on Sunday at Pigeon Island always coincides with Mothers Day, which seems apt this year. From all reports, this year’s Jazz & Arts Festival was the Mother of all Festivals, in terms of the lineup, the crowds, the involvement of local artistes, and the sheer joy and enthusiasm that the Festival has generated after a three-year Covid Hiatus and the replacement of the traditional Jazz & Arts Festival in 2017.

Richard Peterkin- one of the Saint Lucian also shared his experience for Jazz and Art festival of the country. He stated ,”This year was the first time that we have been out of Saint Lucia for the entire Jazz festival, so I have had to rely on reports and posts to gauge how it turned out. I feel like those folks in the diaspora who rely on second-hand reports to comment on activities at home. I was hoping to have seen Sting, Buju, Luther, Rema and Shenseea as the lineup this year looked so good. Back in 2016 it was getting a little stale, so we usually only went on the last day.”

This year’s festival follows the 2023/2024 Estimates which illustrated that Saint Lucia had experienced the Mother of all Macro-economic performances and economic growth in 2022, and seems set ready to surpass the GDP levels and tourism arrivals last seen in 2018 and 2019.

The revenge tourism that we felt in 2022 is being replicated by the surge in Jazz attendances this year, even with reduced Caribbean airlift.

The Minister of Tourism and Creative Industries has promised that after Jazz, we will have the Mother of all Carnivals in 2023, with the budget for the development of Culture and the creative industries almost doubled to $17.6 million in 2023/2024. The La Rose Flower festival and Creole Heritage month in August and October respectively should see a similar bounce in activities this year, ending with the Mother of all Christmas’s in December.

The country needs the boost in activity and confidence after the Covid years, and it seems that the recovery is lifting all boats, given the performances and recognition that we are getting in sports this year, from Julien Alfred (Track), Antoine Destang (Swimming) and Donald Sammy (Cricket) and others. Mamai Sent Lisi and Mother Helen are in a good place, and her children are having a good time.

“With all this mothering, as Saint Lucia celebrated Mother’s Day on Sunday let’s consider how they can use their maternal instincts to seriously address our problems of crime, antisocial behaviour and inequality, and find tangible ways to care for each other, and nurture our young people who have drifted from the moral values that defined us as a happy and caring people,”Richard added.

He further said,”The storms we have faced and will face in the coming years may have diminished our ability to enjoy our lives, but there is no reason we can’t learn how to dance in the rain.“